Archive for May, 2009
Tina Newberry
Posted in Painting, tagged Art, Bloomington IN, Painting, Tina Newberry on May 29, 2009| 13 Comments »
William Itter/Philip Ayers at the Painting Center
Posted in Painting, tagged Art, Bloomington, Drawing, Indiana, NYC, Painting, Painting Center, Philip Ayers, watercolor, William Itter on May 27, 2009| 6 Comments »
William Itter and Philip Ayers at the Painting Center, May 26-June 20, 2009.
From the Press Release:
Itter states, “I am compelled to construct a surface field for the unfolding imagination — equivocal and ironic, where myriad thoughts are found and represented. The picture plane is a place where reversing figure-ground relationships seem inescapable and bound by paradoxical meanings. The simultaneous interplay of line, shape, and color presents an alternating subject continually shifting in visual posture that proposes a timeless mutable character.”
Matthew Murphy
Posted in Not Painting, Painting, tagged Boston, Massachusetts College of Art, Matthew Murphy, Seattle, University of Washington on May 24, 2009| 11 Comments »
Joseph Noderer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, Chicago, Illinois, Joseph Noderer, Linda Warren Gallery, Painting on May 18, 2009| 35 Comments »
Clare E. Rojas: Believe Me
Posted in Painting, tagged Art, Chicago, clare rojas, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Painting on May 14, 2009| 3 Comments »
Honore Sharrer obituary in the NY Times
Posted in Painting, tagged Art, Artist, Honore Sharrer, Painting on May 13, 2009| 3 Comments »
Ruth Gwily’s Cycle
Posted in Painting, tagged Art, comics, Cycle, Drawing, Illustrations, Israel, Ruth Gwily, Tel Aviv on May 11, 2009| 2 Comments »
Cycle, by Tel Aviv, Israel-based Ruth Gwily is amazing. Looks like the images on her website represent just a small part of a book I’m definitely adding to my Amazon wishlist.
Michael Krueger studio visit at Fecal Face
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, Artist Studio, Colored Pencil Drawing, High School Notebook Art, Lawrence KS, Michael Krueger, Printmaking on May 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »
MWCapacity: Home of the fantasy
Posted in Not Painting, tagged Art, Curatorial Fantasy Football, Melanie Schiff on May 5, 2009| 28 Comments »
Melanie Schiff, Neil Young, Neil Young
In this era of slashed curatorial travel budgets, it’s pure fantasy to speculate that curators of any of the next few Whitney Biennials might have the initiative to take an out-of-pocket car trip around America, visiting artist studios and trying to make the Biennial reflect the state of American art, rather than engaging in an art world version of 1990s hip-hop East Coast/West Coat feuding. The last biennial was comprised almost entirely artists living in New York, L.A. and San Francisco, and that’s when foundation dividends were good (Melanie Schiff was one of two artists living and working in Chicago.)
So I’m all for a sort of fantasy-football type game where we, the MWC community, try to come up with a list of names of artists working outside of those few metropolises where curators dare to travel; artists who really reflect art in this country today, artists who really deserve to be in a premier exhibit of contemporary American art.
I’m thinking that a list of up-and-coming unkowns would be good and also maybe a few older artists, whose influence or relevance may be under-recognized would be nice to come up with as well. Vote early, vote often. I want to get some responses here. I’ll feel bad if you guys just leave me hanging. Maybe some of you lurking masses can shake loose and say something.
Like ‘Mad Men’ for Hillbillies.
Posted in Painting, tagged Kansas City, Like Mad Men for Hillbillies, Nelson Atkins, Persephone, Thomas Hart Benton on May 4, 2009| 3 Comments »
Still thinking about not much but the American wing that’s just reopened at the Nelson Atkins. Very likely going back ASAP. So glad to be able to look at this amazing THB painting. I still maintain that—while it is stylistically very much a part of the past—Benton had to have been deeply aware of the various social/moral problems he’s presented here.
For some reason the Nelson-Atkins isn’t able to have a Zoomfinder up to see way up close on this one, but here are a few of my other Nelson favorites:
Ross Braught, Tchaikovsky’s 6th: With stylized landscape painting being such a trend at the moment, I really wish there was someone working outside of the whole Radiohead album cover vein, and more like Braught here.
Thomas Eakins, Female Study: Go to the Zoomfinder, get right up to that delicate brushwork, check out that pencilled grid. Delicate. Unsexy. Lovingly painted.
Gilbert Stuart, Dr William Aspinwall: There’s a portrait painting trick I learned about one time: Yellow on the forehead, changing to red around the cheeks and nose and blue and blacks around the mouth. Which makes me look at this painting as a Rothko with sad eyes.
George Caleb Bingham: Dr. Benoist Troost: Eh. Okay painting. Kind of fun to look at because our local ‘bad street’ is named after the doc here.